00:00
I think when you once you treat your hobby like a job,
00:03
that's like a recipe for failure. And that's what happens to a lot of people.
00:08
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
00:13
I put my all in it like days off on a road. Let's travel never looking
00:18
Alright. What's going on? What's up, man?
00:21
So we're gonna get some into some ideas, but let me tell you something that I did this week. And I cannot give d I've actually gotten in trouble three different times where someone was like, hey, we had this conversation,
00:32
and you just went and talked to me.
00:35
Well, I'm like, well, I don't
00:37
I just when you and I the way that you and I talk now is how we talk all the time. Yeah. And yeah. And they're so they're right. So I'm gonna try to keep this one vague. I had this dinner, and I was with a guy who has eight thousand
00:50
employees in China, as well as many thousand in America.
00:55
Wow. And, yeah, impressive person. Like a factory or something else in China? Tech tech related. Just like just some huge company. You you if I gave you a hundred guesses, you likely wouldn't guess it. It's just some big company that exists in in the tech world. Fair enough. And,
01:10
it's impressive, but it's not like a mainstream thing. Okay. And there was this other guy there who made a comment where he was, like, China's gonna crush us in the next five years or something. And then a couple other people People love to say that, by the way. Don't people love saying how China's passed up America?
01:28
A bunch of other people pounced on that. And then this guy it was this guy, he lives in China.
01:34
I believe he he he I don't know what ethnicity he was, but he looked like he I mean, he's probably born and raised in China. And then there's this other woman there who actually was born and raised in China. And this guy with the six thousand Chinese employees goes,
01:47
a lot of people say that. I do not think that's true, and I don't think any of you ever think that.
01:53
He was just saying he was like Americans
01:55
actually work maybe as hard or harder than a lot of other countries. Interesting.
02:00
And and also you talk about this, like, artificial intelligence in this,
02:05
it's mostly AI that people I mean, they talk about China crushing America and a bunch of stuff, but AI is like a a hot thing. And this guy was like, I don't think that would happen. And if and what I think you should do is invest all most of your money into American,
02:19
equities.
02:20
I think because, like, I'm just so bullish on America. And that's so it was, like, an interesting perspective. Have you ever heard It's like the one person who probably knows what they're talking about at the table and everybody else who just reads shit on Twitter and, like, regurgitates
02:32
it.
02:33
Alright. I'm gonna go with the guy who's got six thousand employees in China. That that makes more sense to me. That's, you know, and and that was good. I felt great about that. And So, it was just an interesting perspective. But
02:44
we You you love to use some, pro America news
02:49
Yeah. Well, so I'm also just finished reading this really great book. Do you know who John Steinbeck is? No.
02:55
Of course, you do grapes of wrath?
02:57
No. What is that? Are you serious?
03:02
I got a blank here.
03:03
Wow. Have you heard of Dekelle Mockingbird? I have heard of Dekelle Mockingbird. That's the offer. Oh my god. Like, Jod cyber I mean, it people are gonna make fun of you, by the way. Anyway, it's just I mostly just read very potter. Okay. Like, it let's look here. This guy he was born in nineteen o two, so he's dead. He's die probably died in the seventies. But anyway, I'm reading great book about his memoir from driving across the country for three months in America and getting to know America. And it's really funny nineteen sixty five, when he was doing this trip, he was complaining about how Americans are getting out of touch with and are getting too focused on technology and how there's refrigerators everywhere, and there's TVs everywhere, and how there's artificial food everywhere. It's very funny. We've always complained about this stuff, but
03:43
I do love learning about America. I think America's special. I think we have this resilience
03:48
And I think the yeah. Anyway, I'm I'm very pro America. So, yes, I did like hearing it. But you wanna talk about some ideas?
03:54
Yeah. By the way, Dan corrected us. I don't think he wrote kill a mockingbird, but No. He he didn't. Man or something.
04:00
He he he didn't write to kill a mockingbird. I'm saying his work is like It's like this. It's it's like did he write of my cement? I know he wrote, like, grapes of wrath. It's just like a famous, like, American classic. I'm just shocked. The fact that you don't know that, You wrote up my cements. You know that. So the fact that you you did know I know that as in I've heard those words before. That's all I know about that. Anyways, let's let's go into the stuff I do know about because I feel a lot better about that. And also,
04:26
Bitcoin rally. Thank you.
04:28
I've been waiting for this Bitcoin pump, and here we are. We're back up life is good because Bitcoin is now.
04:34
It, like, spiked up to almost forty thousand,
04:36
over the last, like, twenty four hours, forty eight hours. Was a bit of a short squeeze. About a billion dollars of short positions
04:42
got liquidated,
04:44
and that caused the price to run up because
04:47
Are you familiar with how that works, by the way? Like, what a short squeeze is? Like, so No. So here's the, like, non technical,
04:53
non super,
04:56
super like nuanced version of it. Basically, when you have a short, you're betting against something.
05:01
And if it goes up, you are on the hook to pay the the the sort of the price for the for being wrong. And so if you think something's gonna keep going up, you're better out just closing down your short position, just taking the
05:13
l and saying, okay. I'll pay. I'll I will I will go buy the shares now because I'm, you know, let's say I I was it's at thirty thousand. I think it's going down. It goes to thirty two. You know what? To close out my position, I'll go buy the asset at thirty two and I'll eat the loss. Right?
05:29
But what happens is because all the
05:32
shorts start worrying that the price is gonna run up. They all start trying to close out their positions at the same time. So they all start buying. So the people who are betting against it, all of a sudden at all this buying pressure
05:43
where they have to to close out their position, they have to buy Bitcoin, which causes the price to go up and up and up and up. And so what happened is as it started running up, all the shorts had to cover their positions because they were massively leveraged. Right? They're not putting in their own money. They're putting in, like, five to ten percent down and they're taking the the they're taking ten x or twenty x leverage on their position. So as the price goes up, they're very sensitive to it. And so I think that's what happened, to cause the price to go up about ten thousand dollars in the last two days is
06:14
those shorts had to cover their position. This is what happened with Tesla. Tesla was the most shorted stock in the stock exchange.
06:20
And then as the price started to go up, those shorts
06:23
you know, they're basically are paying a huge price for every every dollar it goes up. So they start to close out their positions, which puts which puts a bunch a bunch of buying pressure which is why it becomes a squeeze because the shorts themselves cause the other shorts to, like, have to cover, and it just causes the price to shoot up way above what its earnings is and anything else.
06:43
Dude, this is funny. It's funny because, like, when you you don't so we're in this chat group Sean and me and all a bunch of other, like, successful young guys, and they talk about, like, alpha, like, crushing alpha. And I'm like, I don't know what that means. I got no idea what that means. We talked about short squeeze. I'm like, this these words don't mean anything to me. I don't even know what they mean.
07:01
You you guys feel like so sophisticated to me. Yeah.
07:05
Alright. Let's talk about some ideas. Can we? Yeah. Let's do it. You wanna go or you want me to go?
07:11
You go first. Okay. I have one. Okay. Here's another one that's crypto related, and you're gonna be like, what? But I'm telling you this is a good idea. This is actually Ben's idea. So first of all, Ben is visiting me. So I'm getting to see Ben in person. He's sitting five feet away from me. I wanted her to join this, but and so many goddamn technical difficulties setting up that, like, I don't know how he I could get it to be where it works, but maybe Wednesday
07:33
will take an extra hour hand and just get it set up for a two person set up.
07:38
But anyways, Ben, we and Ben were talking last night. He's like, you know, one we're talking about courses. Right? Because and I can share kinda, like, how what the numbers rent like, I just finished my course. I can share what the numbers were on that. But we're talking about other few other potential courses we could do. Like, what would be fun? He's like, I don't know. He's like, we're not the right people to teach this, but I think this course would crush right now. So, Sam, tell me, do you know what solidity is if I say, oh, solidity?
08:02
No. When I saw you writing, I thought I thought it was a typo for
08:06
solidarity.
08:07
Yeah. My solidarity is what we call it. So solidity is the programming language that you use to write smart contracts for Ethereum.
08:15
So let's say, like, one of the most promising things about crypto is that you can write a smart contract. So think, like,
08:22
a basic escrow contract. I buy a house, You're gonna give me the title. I'm gonna give you the money. I don't wanna give you the money first. You don't wanna give me the title first. So we use this third party, this escrow agent. We pay them five thousand dollars. Basically, you hand them the title. I hand them the money. They say, yep. They're both here, and then they give it to each other. Right? So in the real world, we pay these exorbitant
08:42
middle man fees. I I don't know what you paid for your house when you when you bought it. Or you just did another real estate transaction. I don't know what you're paying for escrow. I don't even I didn't even look at it. I don't even From it was like four grand to do an escrow transaction, which sucked. I was like, this is just two thousand dollars for nothing.
08:55
When I sold my business, I think the escrow was fifty thousand dollars. Right. Crazy. They they it's crazy. And and and they literally do, like, one ounce of work. They literally just
09:05
oh, you hand me the title and you hand me the money? Great. I'm gonna just turn one hand over here and I'll give you the you'll give you this. I'll give them that. So a smart contract basically says, look, we don't need this, like, person in the middle. We don't need to pay them four thousand dollars. Let's just make a contract with some rules and we'll just instead of writing it like a lawyer contract, we'll write it like a programmer contract. The programmer contract says, hey, When this wallet has this much money in it, person a has fulfilled their obligation. And when this wallet has this asset in it, person b has fulfilled their obligation and then release the assets to each other.
09:37
And so and instead of paying four thousand dollars, you can pay four dollars or forty dollars, whatever the gas fees are at the time. So That's smart contracts. So what what that means is a lot of jobs today that go to lawyers are gonna go to programmers because you're not gonna want a lawyer to write a contract for something. You're gonna wanna program it to write it down, but you need that contract to, like, work. It needs to be, like, solid, bug proof, hack proof, and, like, I needed to do the many things that I need my my transactions to do. So there is an extreme shortage right now of smart contract developers. Of developers who know how to write in this new programming language and write these types of contracts.
10:13
But it's clearly like a big part of the future in my opinion. And so one idea here is to create,
10:20
basically, a boot camp that takes an existing engineer and says, hey, cool. Oh, you write JavaScript
10:26
or, like, you know, you you're, you're a back end engineer. You're one of, like, ten million
10:32
Why don't you come over here where there's this high demand, high shortage of engineers that know how to do this thing? I could train you in six weeks to learn how to write, like, smart contracts and solidity.
10:41
And then go to all the companies that are trying to hire this and basically do a Lambda school. I think you can do Lambda school that's really niche, really focused. And if I'm an engineer that, like, I'm a Cryptonerd.
10:51
This is a business that I think you could do. You could just train other engineers
10:54
to, like, learn how to write smart contracts and then get tired and placed in these jobs that you take the placement fee. What do you think of that? So I'm doing research while you're talking. Alright.
11:04
Wow. Okay. No. I I agree with the lot that you said except for the last part. So there's this company called Coursera. Have you heard of Coursera? Of course.
11:14
So they were starting in two thousand twelve, and I believe that they were started because the two guys, I think they worked at Google. And they're noticing that we are struggling to hire a particular type of engineer. I'm just this is just off memory, so I I might be a little bit off here about some of the stuff. But, anyway, they,
11:30
and so they built, like, these courses and they built it so people can get jobs at Google.
11:36
Or machine learning or something. Yeah. It was some type of data science or machine learning. I've I forget exactly what it was.
11:42
And they they came out of the gate and they crushed it. And then, like, over the last five years, they kinda, like, went nowhere and kinda, like, it's like, what the hell happened to that company? They're not really doing that well anymore. Well, over the last year and a half, two years with COVID and a bunch of other stuff, they started crushing it. Do you know what, Coursera's revenue is now? No idea.
12:01
So they, they went public. Did you know that? No.
12:04
Yeah. A lot of people didn't know it. We didn't talk about that. Like, stagnated and, like, wasn't going anywhere. Yeah.
12:09
That's what everyone thought. So in two thousand twenty, they did about three hundred million dollars or, sorry, my bad, four hundred million dollars in revenue. And they're currently publicly traded at a five and a half billion dollar valuation.
12:21
Wow. Not bad.
12:22
Yeah. Crazy. Right? Totally forgot about it. And what you did with your course, what well, I don't know if you did this, but what a lot of people in like you and me will do courses and we'll kinda do these kinda like bootleg things not bootleg, but, like, you are literally
12:37
yeah. And you'll charge, like, three hundred dollars or something like that, which I've done before. And
12:43
that makes things a little bit and you want, like, a person to buy. And that makes things a little bit challenging. What I would do is I would take the thing that you're describing
12:50
And with this with Bitcoin, there's, like, all these crazy new things that you gotta learn really quickly. I would just copy the Coursera model and just churn these fuckers out and charge, like,
12:59
eight thousand dollars, and it's, like, we're gonna, like, a company needs to buy in order to train their people out of two. So I think that's Lambda for X. I would do Coursera for X. Okay. I think that's fair. The thing with the Lambda side, which is basically, I think every time you place one of these engineers, that's like a twenty to twenty five thousand dollar fee that you get. And so it doesn't take much to be I don't I wouldn't do this as like a venture scale business, not not at all. This is basically
13:26
I'm a developer
13:27
who
13:28
you have to be the right mold. It's like, I've been tinkering with smart contracts for the last two years anyways.
13:34
I've actually kinda, like, gotten up to speed myself. I'm a converted back end engineer who now does smart contracts.
13:40
And I couldn't go. I I work at, like, a FANG company today. I make four hundred thousand dollars But, like, wouldn't it be great to make, like, four million dollars a year? And I think this is a way to make four million dollars a year as, like, a two person company, basically.
13:52
That's just I agree. Yeah. But I would never do it in a Lambda so when Sean says Lambda School, he's referring to it's free, and you make money by getting like a twenty five thousand dollar referral placement or or a percentage of their salary.
14:05
I have I know nothing about Lambda other than we had Austin on the show, and I think he's amazing, and I love him. And you're an investor. That's really all I know about it. I think my prediction, if I had a bet money on it is that it won't work. Yeah. I think that's a I mean, I think that's a fair prediction about most startups. I think that's true. Probably yeah. But they're not most startups. They've raised, like, a hundred million dollars probably. They're not, like, an early stage startup. Like, in the thick of it. I think that if they're out of business in two years, I wouldn't be surprised. Right. And I would agree with that. Even as a fan and an investor, I I would agree with that.
14:35
I think that you that okay. So here's okay. Let me do two things. First, let me share with you a really hilarious story. Do you know this Twitter account?
14:42
Greg It's, like, Greg, nine five five three zero two two, like, three two six seven seven nine nine. A white guy? Like, not, like, a white old guy. It's a white no. Not old guy. It's a white, like, nerdy, dark guy.
14:53
No. I don't know.
14:54
Oh, you haven't seen this? Just Google search, Greg meme.
14:59
Greg meme account.
15:00
You'll see it, and I bet you've seen this guy. So You know, like, these me, Mecosto, there's, like, doc doctor Park Patel.
15:06
By the way, big fan of him. I think he's a big fan of us.
15:09
He works for the hustle. You know that. Right? Doctor. Park Patel works at the hustle?
15:14
I'm like, man. You just shouted Doctor. Park Patel. Amazing. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. He, like, him, He he's a contractor for us. He writes for us sometimes. Oh my god. I love it. Wow. No. I did not know that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, we My brain is racing to figure it out. Who it is now. Okay. No. He's not, like, like, I was a fan of his, and I deemed him. And I was, like, hey, you don't know the real identity.
15:38
I do. Okay. You do. But it's yeah. So you're saying after you saw a dark part, so then you contracted. Okay. Gotcha. Alright. Makes way more sense. So anyways, what he one thing he does is, like, every time Chammoth tweets, he's, like, the first reply, and he's, like, just says that, like, like, I'm proud of his son or something like that. Like, something like totally nonstandard.
15:57
So Greg does that with, like, Kylie Jenner. And, like, other people like that where every time she posts something, it'd be like, babe, why did you, like, you didn't call me or, like, you just be like, be like, oh, so proud of you, babe.
16:10
So it's, like, as if they're dating. And so he's this, like, dorky looking white guy account. And
16:16
this is the other day. Do you know who Jose Kenseco is? Of course. Ben told me the story. So so Jose Kenseco, the bay former baseball player tweets out
16:24
I need a I need a smart contract developer for a new token, a token developer for a new token I'm gonna launch. It's just like the classic thing for, like, Paris Hilton and
16:34
I could say. Are
16:35
these like Like, no one know any good designers? Has been has been celebrities that are, like, ready to launch their own crypto token. Here we go. That what could go wrong? So so Greg replies
16:45
and Greg's, like,
16:47
like, whatever. Like, me, pick then what did he say? What did he say? What was his reply? Was it just, like, pick me, something like that?
16:54
Oh, yeah. He goes, hey, it's Greg. DM me. How can I help? And Jose replies and goes, he goes,
17:01
Awesome. Like, are you a token developer?
17:04
And then, like, are you a are you a developer or smart for do you know how to do token development? And then Greg just replies.
17:10
No way, Jose.
17:11
It has, like, two hundred thousand likes on that tweet.
17:15
It's just, like, for most liked to eat some Twitter. Do finish whatever. It was just, like, so good, so dumb. But anyways, this guy's, like, crushing it right now. Like, he's got, like, I don't know, a hundred and something, hundred thirty
17:26
Well, it's the funny thing is, you know, when you sign up for Twitter, let's say you type Sam, it'd be like Sam's not available. Would you like Sam? Eight hundred thousand and six? Because that's, like, the next one available. So his is Greg, and then it's, like, twelve numbers that are, like, the whatever the default thing would be. So it's, like, you would never think it's gonna go viral. Yeah. It's Greg one six six seven six whatever. Like, you know, like ten numbers long. So what does this have to do though with? Okay. So that was just my smart contract,
17:53
token developer,
17:54
tangent.
17:56
My next idea, if you're ready to transition,
17:59
is
18:01
is
18:03
Unbundling a piece of YC. So YC does a few things for founders.
18:08
YC
18:09
puts a stamp on you. It says, This is a YC startup. So all of a sudden, your evaluation's gonna go up, blah blah blah. They kinda coach you so they say, oh, you know, come in for office hours, tell us about your idea. Maybe we help you pivot your idea. Maybe we help you stay focused on growth or, you know, how to, like, tweak it so you grow faster. And they do that for three months, and then then they start working on your pitch, and then there's demo day, which is, like,
18:30
We're you're gonna get to stay in front of investors. You gotta give a one minute pitch. You're gonna raise money.
18:35
And that works. So they have, like, whatever, hundred and twenty startups a year now or something doing that.
18:41
But another another kinda like course, quote unquote course. I'm very I was brainstorming. I was, like, very interested in working backwards from. What's a course where
18:50
the person gets a clear outcome. So this is part of my learnings of, like, doing a course, which is people don't buy a course for learning. They buy some change. They buy a transformation for themselves. And so, like, you know, for a startup going from unfunded to funded or, like,
19:05
you know, no name to, like, oh, stamp of approval. That's, like, actually, a big change. And so one one transformation
19:11
and one change that people would buy is getting their first round of funding. It's like, I'm not just gonna teach you knowledge that you can may or may not use.
19:20
It's like, I'm gonna help you get funded. And so I was thinking, could you, like, I've raised probably twenty million dollars in my life, and I've helped a bunch of founders raise money. And I I think I'm pretty good at storytelling. So I was like, I think I could help
19:33
a founder who's got no no funding today, get funding in, like, a one month period.
19:39
And I think I could basically just sit you down with the deck with your story and then basically say cool. Like, there's a pretty intense workshopping of your deck and your story to get be as good as it's gonna be. And then there's, like, a bunch of angel, like, introductions and, like, teaching you how to manage your pipelines that you run this, like, a process, like a bidding war. Unlike what most people do, which is they kinda try to date one investor at a time and they go kinda slow and they fear rejection and they don't know how to reach out and all this stuff. I could teach you that kinda like the sales process of investing. And I was thinking I was like, oh, you can do this, like, on a success basis. So,
20:12
again, like Lambda, which you don't like, but
20:14
on a you could align your incentives, which is By the way, I like Lambda. I just think the business model is silly. I think because the thing with education is that
20:22
most people will never benefit from what you're telling them. Right. Well, that's the in some ways, that's the beauty of Lambda, but it's also the bad side of Lambda. Right? The beauty of Lambda is
20:32
their incentive is aligned. So let's say most courses, like, let's say for my writing course, I don't care if you're good at writing, bad at writing, and I really don't truly care if you're gonna do it or not because I get paid either way. Right? Like, I'd love for you to take the course and have a big benefit.
20:46
But the reality is, like, my financial incentive is not such that if you don't if you if if you don't hit your goals, it doesn't really make a financial difference to me, whereas for Lambda, it does. They have to select people who are gonna be able to succeed,
20:58
and then they only make money when somebody gets what they want, which is a high paying job. So that's the beauty of Lambda, but it's also the hard part about scaling Lambda.
21:06
What were what were the results from your course though?
21:09
Like, would it not go well?
21:11
It went well. So, basically okay. So here's the kind of the, like, the learnings from my course. Alright. So Can I guess? Can I guess? Yeah. Yeah. We'll do it on each category. So first is Let's just start with the most interesting one. Money. How much money do you think I made doing this course?
21:26
And by the way, let me just get the context. I taught a course on power writing, which is basically writing to get a result.
21:32
So, like, the writing I tap, I do, which is, like, if I'm writing an email, it's because I want somebody to reply. I'm writing a landing page because I want somebody to click buy button. I'm writing, tweet stories because I want people to share it. And, like, the stuff you learn in school is not the stuff that that actually works in the real world. And so it's like copywriting plus plus. So that's the that's the course. Alright. So I do this one. Hundred five days my guess. Hundred fifty thousand. Very close. So I did a hundred and twenty seven thousand of top line sales. And then let's just break down the the P and L. So So then there's my cost of making the course. So I basically had a guy do, like, custom illustrations and graphics and things like that. That'd probably be
22:10
eight to ten thousand. Seventy five hundred.
22:12
And he was amazing. And he was really good. And so I'm like, I love that. That was that was worth it. Then there's Maven's fee. So Maven's fee is on the top number. So I should take that out first. Ten percent. Ten percent. Right. So so take out twelve grand. Roughly from hundred twenty seven, then you take out seventy five hundred of cost reduction, then everything else,
22:30
and then there's payment processing fees. That was another four three or four grand. And so my net was, like, one o I'm I'm doing the math bad here, but I think it was, like, one zero five, roughly.
22:41
And then okay. So so that's kinda, like, that's the the money in. And so that was off of three hundred and twenty students. I charged, I the first batch I did at half price. So I charge, I think,
22:52
four hundred and fifty dollars or something like that. Four hundred dollars maybe it was for the for the course.
22:57
And if I had to check that, did did you do, like, an MPS? Yes.
23:02
I would bet it was, like, out of ten. Out of ten. So for those who don't know, net net promoter score, basically, you ask one question to your audience, which is how likely are you to refer this to a friend on a scale of one to ten, ten being, I, you know, I absolutely will refer I would absolutely refer a friend to this one being no way.
23:19
Seven point three.
23:21
Nine point one.
23:23
That's amazing. Most everything is the seven. Right? Because people didn't reply to the survey. So I I'm assuming the people who really didn't give a shit also didn't reply to the survey. So I gave myself a true NPS of probably eight But it was a nine point one on the the stats. So do you think people loved it?
23:39
I think people loved it.
23:41
The feedback was kind of amazing. Then I did a survey of, like, what did you like about it? And, basically, it broke into three categories. It was like,
23:48
look, I can't, you know, the first one was
23:51
Dude, two of those sessions were, like, like, game changers for me. It's like, oh, you're a cold emailing one?
23:57
Like, that was great. I immediately implemented this, and I got, you know, meetings that I wanted. I booked more sales. Like, that one I just I used right away. Or, like, the second one would be, like, you have one about writing inside of a big company, how to, like, stand out with your writing inside of big company, that was I didn't even know I wanted that. That was a great one. And so everybody kinda had two of this. I did seven sessions. Everybody had, like, two sessions that they were, like, That was the one, and the rest was fine. You know, like, the rest was good, but, like, didn't really, like,
24:24
those two, I got my moneys worth. The rest was gravy.
24:27
And then I asked people the other question I asked people was, on average, how much value did you get? Like,
24:33
you know, zero dollars, the price of admission, like a one x return, three x, five x, ten x, whatever it was. And then the average per the average answer to that was ten x my money. I got ten x my value back out of it. And I was like, Okay. For what, I don't know if that's, like, a scientific question because how the hell are they measuring that? I don't really know. But, okay.
24:52
Downsides.
24:53
Guess what the biggest downside was? Because you've done a course before. So tell me what you what do you predict was my biggest
25:00
the the biggest downside of it.
25:02
Well, does that include logistics, like, quality, like,
25:06
so I think they'll probably complain about your camera or your sound or the time.
25:12
Yeah, timing was the biggest one because I taught it live.
25:15
Yeah. And so a lot of people, you know, were like, oh, you know, I could I either the time worked great for me. It worked okay for me or it was horrible for me because I'm in Australia, and that time zone was awful. So I only watched the recordings.
25:26
The the I meant the biggest complaint I had in doing the course. What was the biggest downside of doing the course? Talk too fast?
25:33
No. No. I mean, like, why What was a pain in the ass for me? Well, it's probably just way too much work. Yes. Complete underestimation
25:41
of the work. Yeah. It's so much work.
25:44
I spent probably
25:47
fifty to a hundred hours, like, making the content, which was way more thought it would do. I thought it would take me like It's so much work. An hour or two per session. Alright. So let's say two hours per session. That's like fifteen hours of work. It was like a full day. It was like an eight hour day per per session I made plus, like, the actual teaching of it. And then afterwards, what I would do is I structured my the one the best thing I did, by the way, was
26:11
I think
26:12
I don't think I invented this. I'm sure other people do this, but I didn't really know what it's called, but I basically structured the session like this. It was like, alright. You show up. So it's like, hey, we're gonna be here for an hour. The very first thing I do is I say, alright. The promise is this. By the end of this hour, you're gonna be able to do this. Alright? So that's my problem. That's the magic trick I'm gonna show you. Today, you can't do that or you're bad at it. You're gonna be good at it by the end of this hour. And I basically would do I'd say, alright. Let's say it's a cold email. I'm not gonna tell you anything about cold email. Write a cold email right now. And they would all have to sit there while I'm sitting there watching them, ten fifteen minutes, write the thing. So it was called do learn redo. So I'd have them do it. I got that gives the baseline. And they would all share it in the Slack channel. Then I would teach them, like, not everything about cold email. I'd be like, hey, here's the three biggest things you could do to improve your pre improve cold emails. I do some examples.
26:59
I teach them the theory, and then I'd be like, alright. Last fifteen minutes, you're gonna redo it. And then they would redo it. And then they would just have a before and after of their one hour session where it's, like, a really shitty first attempt and then, like, a pretty good second attempt. And then after the course, I would take one hour. And I would just go through as many examples as I could of students. And just give them, like, feedback through Loom. So that was, like, that worked pretty well, but it was, like, kind of intense for me because I'm basically performing a magic trick live. Don't know what they're gonna do. And so it was kind of high risk. It wasn't like
27:30
like it could Well, anything could happen.
27:33
My wife did it, by the way, Sarah, my wife did it, and she sold out. She made ten thousand in, like,
27:39
two weeks maybe. And why did she cap it? Cause they told me to cap it. And I didn't catch mine. She's not like you and me. This is her first time doing, like, a public facing thing. Right.
27:49
You know, you and I have
27:53
that, you know, tens of thousands of hours of, like, riffing under our belt and, like, we know how to perform. She she's just learning to figure out how to do it. By the way, one thing you should tell her. Best thing I did was I did rehearsals.
28:03
So for each session, I would invite four kids who were, like, kind of, like, twenty five and under usually
28:08
who can't afford the course. And I just say, hey, you want the course for free in a personal session. I need to do a dry run. With you. And so I did a dry run for each of the sessions. And in doing that, I would realize five minutes in, like,
28:20
oh, this is all fucked up. Like, I gotta change this or, like, Wow. This is way too hard when I just asked them to answer.
28:26
They're confused. Like, they they don't know what's going on. Yeah. So I I needed to do those open mics, basically, to make it work. Will you do this? Do you think this will be a significant income source for you in the future? Or are you gonna quit doing it? So I'm doing it one more time, and we're gonna see how that My my goal was basically I put the price back where the original price, so nine fifty.
28:45
So I'm like, alright. Let's see if there's enough demand there at that point. Because below that, it's not really worth it for me. I don't think. Because you need a lot of students and it's a lot of work. So I'm doing it one more time in August.
28:57
We'll see if it's, like,
28:58
good again. I had a lot of fun doing it. So we'll see if it's fun again or if it gets, like, old for me. But then I also have a bunch of other ideas other courses that I wanna do. So I think I'm gonna teach different courses, which is more work, but I think more fun for me.
29:11
Can I tell you okay? So now, by the way, we're talking about maven dot com. Which,
29:16
this is here's your disclosure. We both have incredibly invested interest in this, and I want them to make money. Yeah. Because we invested in them. Yeah.
29:24
I do think they're gonna have to change. I don't think it's gonna work to do live courses. I don't think they're gonna have it can't be their bread and butter. It's just gotta be how they get into the market. That's that's my prediction, but we'll see. Well, I started off being, like, I'm gonna do it recorded, and I started recording the content. And I found stuff a few people. And I was like, oh, first of all, recording good content takes a lot of time too. Not like it was gonna save. It takes days of your time when I, you know, it's scalable later, but it takes a lot more time upfront. The second thing was people were way less excited about me recorded.
29:52
And I was like, no, no, look, I'm like, it's me.
29:56
I'm, like, planning this out. It's gonna be, like, as good as I can get it. It's gonna be edited. It's gonna be tight. Versus me live and they're like, no, we'd rather just to beat you live off the cuff and, like, not so tight. Like, the perceived value of live is way higher. And so I was like, okay. If it's easier for me to do and it's higher perceived value, like, that was one pivot I had to make halfway through of, like, switching to live.
30:19
Alright. Let me let me pivot to a different topic. Yeah. You maybe told me about this, but I had Jake research it. I I think you did you tell me about swimply?
30:28
Yes.
30:30
Okay. So
30:31
I like to keep a list of things that I thought are horrible ideas
30:35
and ended up doing, like, amazingly well. I definitely would put Bitcoin in that category. Like, if you don't mind, like, the stupid thing I've ever heard Ryan Hoover told me about product hunt, the day that he was launching it. And I was like, just quit. Don't I also thought it was stupid. Yep. Yeah.
30:49
If you told me I have an easy hack to do this. When I just have a bookmark thing on my Chrome. So whenever I see a startup website that I'm like, oh, that's interesting.
30:57
I bookmark it either into, I think it's gonna work or think it's not gonna work. So I have this, like, then I can go back, like, a year later. I could just go click and see how many of those websites are still, like, up and, like, doing something.
31:08
You know, and I still have this before, I can do that. I've had this for, like, five years.
31:12
So if I saw this next company that I'm about to tell you about in this next idea, if I saw that,
31:17
five years ago or a year ago, I would be like, well, like, just quit. Why why are you even doing these stupid games? Like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. So it's Let's explain. Name is stupid. It's called Swimp Lee.
31:29
Is that piece supposed to be there? Is that a typo?
31:32
Swimply.
31:34
Hold on. Let me see. Is it swimly? It might be swimly.
31:38
No. It is swimply.
31:40
It's swiftly.
31:42
Okay. So I'd like to have a Google stock. That's that's crazy. I thought that I wasn't sure if it was a typo, but he wrote swimply and like everything. The way I found this, I was just driving, and I saw a billboard, and it just said swimply
31:53
rent a swimming pool near you. I was like, what?
31:57
And that's what it is. So,
32:00
you know, with everything going on, people are desperate to get out of their homes, and they're working from their house, they wanna get out. And so they go and they can rent someone else's pool, Airbnb for pools. If you told me about this four years ago, I'd be like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever done. Is right next to, like, go out and rent a dog for an hour. But you're a believer?
32:19
I'm not a believer yet, but the numbers definitely show that I'm wrong. So they've grown two thousand percent since summertime in a roughly fourth. What's so if you grow four they've grown four thousand percent
32:30
in a year, what's that mean? Forty x
32:33
Four thousand is forty x. Yeah. Okay. They just raised the series. That could be on anything. Right? I could start with one and get to forty. That's true. But they raised a series a, which I'm shocked. And who's their their their They raised, like, they raised eleven or twelve million dollars. So so the idea is, like, I have a pool in my backyard. I can set, like, a fifty dollars an hour rate. And somebody who doesn't have a swimming pool in the backyard, because that's a big expense can say, say, cool. We'll rent your private we'll rent your pool we're gonna come swim for two hours, hundred bucks
33:01
is four of us. It's worth it. Like, we we're gonna have fun doing that. And you, like, kinda clean up your backyard later.
33:06
That's the idea. And when they raise their money, they raise their money from, like, some ballers. Like, people who, like, I think I respect is knowing what they're doing. So I definitely think I was wrong. Who?
33:17
Northwest northwest ventures. There I mean, they're, like, a huge,
33:21
a huge thing. Right? Northwest?
33:23
Yeah. Generic name. Come on. If you're gonna if you're gonna have your file like the multi billion dollar, they're big enough that I assume that they have employee used to, like, vet.
33:32
Yeah. Of course. Okay. So their traffic, like, if you look at their similar web thing, it's pretty nuts. So, like, January, it's, you know, fifty thousand visitors. And by June, It's like hockey sticking to four hundred thousand monthly visitors,
33:45
according to similar webs. So similar webs, the exact numbers are not right, but the direction is correct. Usually, And so this thing is, like, doubling.
33:52
It's, like, doubled last month, doubled the month before that, doubled the month before that. So four doubles in a row.
33:58
And so I got I was I was interested in the space because I found a company that was raising money and what they were doing. And the reason I gotta in this company was we had this guy who I talked about this guy named Preston on a podcast. His name was, I don't even remember his last name, but Preston. I think he the company he started was called Spacious where they would,
34:16
do short term
34:17
retail space and rent it out for co working. Yeah. There's this other company that I'll find. I'll I'll I'll say the name in a second. And what they're doing is you can rent people's homes just during the day for co working. Oh, yeah. I've heard of that.
34:29
And it starts with a c. What's it called?
34:32
Cozy or some I don't know what it is. Yeah. Chills.
34:35
I'm just making up names. And, again, that idea, I thought was a stupidest thing. And then I talked to Preston, and he's like, no. Could be legit. These could be huge companies. It's astounding. And so here's a few more companies that that that are interesting. So neighbor is a storage marketplace. And by the way, almost all of these I would bet against, and I am being proven wrong consistently.
34:55
Neighbor is a storage marketplace. They just raised a fifty three million dollar series b. I move is an electric vehicle subscription service. So you can,
35:03
they just raise a bunch of money. I'm actually on board with that. It's just like leasing. Kazoo, subscribe to your next car online. Pakasa, buy, and own a second home with eight others. That's just a time share, isn't it? Yeah. That's And then resort a resort pass, you can share,
35:17
day passes to, resorts, pools, and hotels.
35:20
So, anyway, kind of interesting. I the space is always interested in me because I've been the one saying how I think it's really stupid and it's not gonna work. But these things are actually are are are beating my are are proving me wrong. Right.
35:33
By the way, a a you just said something like share a thing. And we're talking about courses. We had this idea a long time ago. I still think it's a good idea. If somebody wants to do this, I'll be,
35:42
you know, first customer slash your minority business partner who does nothing, besides give you the idea, which is class pass for online courses.
35:50
So I right now would pay, like, If you said, hey, I can bring you a student,
35:55
but you're gonna have to you're gonna have to give it to him for fifty percent off. But I can get you volume of students.
36:00
And you don't have to worry about getting students.
36:03
I'd take that. And if you basically I think you can work out the math where you can basically get
36:09
let's call it a hundred dollars a month from somebody, and then they get access to, like, your course, my course, Sarah's course, you know, like, ten other courses right now.
36:18
And and get all of them basically,
36:20
like, and all you can eat pass. So I think there's a class pass for courses that could work for online courses. It's let me, it could exist.
36:27
Let me keep being a hater, but there's this company called,
36:31
every.
36:32
Every dot what is it called? Two. Every dot. So or every dot two?
36:36
I think every dot too. Yeah. There's guys doing that for newsletters, and the guys running it are great. His name's Nathan. Really cool, wonderful guy.
36:44
I know Matt is a writer there. I like his work. There's a bunch of, like, interesting,
36:48
great writers on there, but I think this business model is horrible,
36:54
because dealing with how you're gonna pay the each rider seems like a huge pain in the ass, doesn't
36:59
it? And if I'm like if I'm like a big shot,
37:02
who brings in subs. So if your stuff brings in a sub, you get the bounty of that. You give some to cool. I'm bringing subs. Like, go f yourself. I wanna own all of it. Yeah. But you get so you get the majority bounty on yours. So let's say you get fifty percent of those subs you bring in, but you're gonna put fifty percent in the pool, so you're gonna get fifty percent from everybody else. And so it's a but the beauty of it is
37:22
when you do in paid newsletter, there's this obligation, like, shit. I gotta write this thing. I can't write One a week, I gotta write two a week. It's gotta be good. It can't just be, like, off the cuff, you know, random stuff. They're paying for this. It's gotta be better than normal blog content. So what they what every does is say, look, You just gotta write one good thing a week, let's say, because the consumer is gonna get act value from eight other writers in the bundle.
37:43
And so that's the that's why this works is for each person, they don't have to carry the whole subscription value themselves.
37:50
They have eight other people contributing to that subscriptions value. And it's confirmed to just give away some. You think this is gonna work?
37:57
I don't know if it's going to work. I think But the concept, at least. You're yeah. I think it can I think it can work? I think so. Basically, I think
38:04
I'm kind of a believer in that that the Mark Anderson thing that he stole from whoever, which was basically, like, most business is just bundling and unbundling.
38:12
And so I think that Right now newsletters are all unbundled and somebody creating a bundle of newsletters, it'll be like the cable package and, like,
38:21
you'll
38:22
Somebody will say, why am I paying for I don't wanna pay for ten individual subscriptions, and some of them are good, some are bad.
38:28
And instead, if I could just pay a flat fifteen dollars a month and get access to my ten favorite writers. Like, great. So I think I think it can work.
38:36
Are you getting sick of newsletters?
38:39
No. I have fun. I like writing my stuff. But I'm I do it on my terms. So, like, I'm not consistent. This thing I send out every Tuesday, but, like, if you subscribe to it, you're like, bullshit. You don't send it every Tuesday. You send it, like, every other Tuesday at best. And so, yeah, because I just, like, if I'm doing something else, that's fun. I just don't send it. And, like,
38:58
you've experienced the pain of my, like, my, like, inconsistencies
39:02
or being late and things like that. Like, it's just kind of like the way I operate on all things. And, like, you know,
39:08
the good the good of it is, like,
39:11
I do it, like, I'm never just going through the motions. Like, I'm always trying to bring it, but if I don't have something to bring, I don't, like, do it. Or, like, sometimes I'm I don't send the thing because I'm doing something interesting, but that'll make the next week's letter more interesting because I was doing something interesting.
39:25
So that's my only way of sustaining these other things. I think when you Once you treat your hobby like a job,
39:30
that's like a recipe for failure. And that's what happens to a lot of people. They they think it's fun to blog, and then they wanna make that their career.
39:37
And then, you know, they make the grave, grave mistake of turning your hobby into a job, when it when you weren't you didn't want it as a job, really. Yeah. It it's hard. It's fucking hard as someone who has not I haven't written them, but I have owned a newsletter company that has sent three hundred sixty five newsletters times four years.
39:55
It's very hard. By the way, it's very challenging. I heard,
39:59
a a another newsletter company that shall not be named
40:02
say that, oh, you know, our subscriber base is, like, you know, the third largest city in America.
40:08
And I thought that was just a bad ass way of saying, like, we have whatever, two million subscribers, three million subscribers, or whatever it is.
40:14
And I think you should steal that and start saying things like that. Yeah. I like that one. It's kinda, like, I think the skin was the one who said,
40:22
the skin said, like, if we were a morning show, we would be the number one most popular morning show. Right.
40:28
Another great way of framing. That's part of this part of the environment. It's just like how do you bullshit? The same way that you can frame it. It's a bit bullshit, but it is yeah. It I it is useful. Right.
40:40
Okay. Do we want we wanna wrap here? Do we wanna go to one more? Let's do one more fun thing. Do you have otherwise, I can pick one. You pick one?
40:48
You wanna pick one off your list, maybe. Do this Elon filing a patent thing. That sounds good. Okay. So, basically,
40:54
I'm working with Jake, our researcher to, like, find different signals and figure out what do those signals mean. And so,
41:01
There's something interesting. I've always been I've always been interested in gas stations because, like I said, earlier, I'm, like, into this nerd about America. I love, like, nostalgia,
41:10
middle America stuff. And gas stations are interesting to me because we spend a lot of time there. Like, I've found memories of gas stations and many of the biggest top one hundred privately owned businesses in America, if you look at one of the biggest privately owned companies in America, most, not most, but a very large percentage are gas stations. Right. And so now by revenue, gas makes up typically two third of sales for gas stations, but it only makes, like, one third or less of profit. The majority of profit comes from buying shit on the inside.
41:38
And
41:39
Elon Musk recently filed a trademark for different restaurant services aimed
41:41
at
41:46
electric vehicles and and things like that and for food services, basically. And so I'm very eager to see what Tesla's gonna do. And also, I'm very eager to see how the the modern gas station is gonna change.
41:59
And so far, what are the biggest ones? I think the biggest ones are,
42:04
are Casey's,
42:06
quick trip. There's a few more that are the top ones. They're not doing shit. Right. Because if you go to a gas station right now for Tesla, it's still a pain in the butt. The Tesla superchargers are way better. And so I'm very eager to see, and I wanted to know what you think, what is gonna happen
42:21
to gas stations and how are they gonna continue to making money? Yeah. So I think there's two big changes that are happening.
42:27
So cars go electric,
42:29
then what the hell happens to gas stations. Right?
42:32
Do they just convert into electric charging stations, or is it gonna be different? Because you're charging at home. Right? Like, I can't fill up my tank overnight
42:40
in my garage, but I can charge my electric vehicle that way. And so maybe those gas stations, they're just not needed anymore, and they need to convert some other use of real estate.
42:49
You know, it's like blockbuster on the corner store. When why would I need that when I could just push a button and stream Netflix to my TV?
42:56
The second is self driving cars, which is gonna change the game for both gas stations
43:01
and for,
43:03
parking garages.
43:05
So, you don't need as much parking when you have self driving cars. Most of city real estate is parking. Whether it's street parking or parking garages, there's a huge amount that's just parking and because cars are idle ninety percent of the time. When cars go self driving, they're not gonna be idle ninety percent of the time. So cities are gonna have to, like, re
43:21
renovate, basically, the the the way they use their land because it's gonna become totally obsolete. But let's do gas stations for a second.
43:28
So one theory is gas stations become like entertainment hubs because actually charging a car takes a lot more time than filling up a gas tank. I think even supercharger takes like thirty minutes, right, to
43:39
to to fill up, you know, basically, to recharge your your Tesla while you're, like, on a road trip or whatever. And so, you know, what what do you do to entertain people during that time? Maybe they're just sitting in their car
43:49
using the the in in car entertainment system, but maybe there's something else that you do with food and drink and TVs and sport maybe it's a sports bar essentially that you turn turn this into. The other thing that I think is interesting
44:01
is,
44:02
like so I'll give my cousin a shout out. So my cousin Rohan has a startup called stable dot auto. So check it out. You're not gonna fully grok it from the from the landing page, but but I'll just tell you about it. So it says company stable.
44:16
Just stable, like, s t a b l e, like, a, like, a stable of horses. And it's not what? Auto, a a u t o.
44:23
So so he started off. What he started off doing was he he he was like a robotics guy from MIT. So he's like, look,
44:31
How do I make it where, a self driving car
44:34
when it, like, self driving cars are gonna need they're free because they're gonna drive people around without a driver. But how are they gonna charge
44:40
Like, they have to go to a charging station, and then are you just gonna have, like, attendance there plugging in cars and taking them out? Like, how's it gonna do that? And so he was creating, like, if you've ever seen Elon tweeted this out once,
44:53
which is a robotic arm that would just find the charging thing and would, like, plug itself in. So it was, like, a self a self Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, as imagine the gasoline pump could go into your car without you having to pick it up and put it in the hole. So he built a robotic arm that did that. So what my cousin was doing was basically he was just saying, oh, if Tesla's doing that, but then there's all these companies try to compete with Tesla. I'll make the robotic arm
45:15
for all the other companies. So, like, every other company has a different, like, charging, like, kinda, like, location on the car. How would I make machine learning that's gonna find the hole and stick that stick in the hole, basically for for that? And he started doing that, but the problem was
45:29
And we I told him this, which was like, look,
45:32
self driving cars are not here. So you're building for a future market. Like, you don't know when it's gonna happen. Like, all know it's gonna happen eventually, but, like, that's a little bit difficult.
45:41
And so,
45:42
and so the and you're also building this robotic arms really hard to hard to build. So he he switched to now he switched to something else, which is basically like software
45:50
that basically will,
45:53
it it it basically tells you when you need to get when you should go charge your when you should go charge your electric car. For so imagine, like, Uber and Lyft, they have these fleets of electric vehicles.
46:04
That are gonna be out in the roads, and that's for sure happening.
46:07
And so when do you go charge?
46:09
If you go wait till you're, like, almost out, you might miss, like, peak
46:13
peak traffic time where you're gonna, like, get a bunch of rides and make a bunch of money.
46:19
You also might go charge when it's really expensive to charge because electricity costs fluctuate throughout the day. So what they're building is basically a app that you load into your, like, this is the least last I heard of second app for any driver of Uber or Lyft that has an electric vehicle that will say, now is the optimal time to charge. Go over here. There's a charging station nearby.
46:37
There's little there's not much traffic for Uber rides right now, and the price of electricity is low. And so it basically
46:44
that'll work while you have human drivers. And then when you have self driving fleets, it'll do that whole thing automatically. It'll basically say, hey, let's send to this ten percent of your fleet to go charge right now. Let's keep ninety percent on the road. And it'll optimize it so you're, like, saving the most money both ways.
47:01
But let's talk about what do you think is gonna happen? Where's the opportunity right now? I I mean,
47:06
his idea that maybe,
47:09
I I think it's far simpler. Have you ever heard of Buckkeys
47:13
Yes.
47:14
Tell people about that. So you know what it is? Buckies is basically in Texas. There's, like, a
47:20
gas station chain that, like, people love. They don't just like it. They love it. It's a tourist destination. And it's destination for a couple of reasons, I think. I've never been one, even though I lived in Texas, it has extremely clean bathrooms,
47:33
and then they have a bunch of food that people are, like, obsessed with.
47:36
It's basically shitting
47:38
sugary food, but it has a funny logo, and they serve like brisket. It's just like low quality, but fun. It became a thing that happened. Yeah. But it's huge. So I think that it's gonna break down in two categories. The first categories is just everyday use. I think people are gonna
47:54
keep their shit at home, charge at home,
47:57
or they're just gonna charge while they're in the grocery store. And that's how they and that's and Whole Foods is gonna be the winner. Second thing is is traveling.
48:05
And I think the way that that's gonna look is Buckies. It's gonna be just like it's gonna be a Buckies Meets Museum of ice cream. So when I go to Buckies, it's a spectacle. I stop there because I'm gonna get, like, a huge soda. I'm gonna get maybe something to eat, but I'm just gonna look at stupid shit like a bucky knife or a bucky book bag, just dump trinkets. It's going into a bass pro shop, basically. It's like going into a bass pro shop or just looking walking around Ikea. It's just a spectacle.
48:31
It's gonna be like that with a little bit of museum of ice cream where there's gonna be a little bit even more spectacles that are fun to take pictures in front of. That is where what's gonna happen. I think, and I think, like, the shells of the world or whatever gas station's seven eleven.
48:46
Seven eleven, I actually think could become a bucky because seven eleven has a little bit of nostalgia. Like, seven eleven, it it's kinda it could be cool. It's like subway. It's dying.
48:56
Yeah. Yeah. It could subway could be could be, the next version of vans. Yeah. So I think there there's definitely some people that are gonna go that route. Right? They make it a tourist destination, and they have a quirky brand, and that works. Think some people are gonna go full automation. So, like, in San Francisco, we had that thing Cafe X. I don't know. Did you ever buy coffee from that?
49:15
No. It took too long.
49:17
Took it long. I mean, it takes, like, a minute. Right?
49:20
It's just stupid. I thought it was dumb. CafeX is stupid. How do you think that's stupid? That's, like, that's so good. So if nobody knows who look at it. Describe it.
49:29
So it's basically
49:31
okay. But here's the thing. So, like, it's basically occurring machine.
49:36
Like, it's not that fancy,
49:39
but it looks it's usually, like, it's in a building and it has, like, this glass around it, and it's a massive robot arm that's making a spectacle of, like, moving the the coffee cup around and then pouring the milk in it. In reality, it could, like, you don't need that stupid fucking arm. It could just be like a coffee vending machine. Like, that so that's why it whenever I saw that, I'm like, when I see these, like, in warehouses or and stuff, it's just like you put two quarters in and you just get, like, the, like, at the hospital. You never been to hospital. You use one of those, cappuccino machines. Like, I don't need this dumb fucking arm to trick me and act like it's doing something special. Okay. So that's definitely one way of seeing it. And I I could see that point of view. I think What's the difference between Starbucks and that vending machine? Is it the quality of the coffee or what what's the difference?
50:21
Probably not the quality. So what is the difference?
50:25
One's a spectacle and one you talk to people.
50:28
No. No. No. So I'm saying, like, between the Keurig machine and Starbucks, like, Why do you even need a Starbucks? Why couldn't Starbucks just be a curious Is that like getting out of the house and seeing people?
50:38
Okay. So maybe it maybe it's that. If that's the case, then Starbucks is safe.
50:42
The other case is basically that
50:44
there's some middle ground of, like, variety
50:47
and quality
50:48
that's, like, above a a coffee machine.
50:51
But
50:51
more like a Starbucks where you have like forty drinks that you want because you want your soy latte with, you know,
50:58
know, you want you want almond milk and then you want two pumps of sugar and you want light ice or whatever. And, like, that's how you like your drink. And so
51:06
you know, you can't get that to have a co at a normal coffee machine. Either the coffee doesn't taste as good or the drink is not as elaborate.
51:11
And Cafex basically says
51:13
cool.
51:14
What if we could serve coffee faster and cheaper than a Starbucks? What if we could serve Starbucks quality, coffee, but faster and cheaper than a Starbucks? Why? Because we have a robot arm that could just, like, do the thing twenty four seven and never call in sick and never be an employee. Never need never have any employee, like, issues.
51:30
And, by the way, I take up one tenth of the square footage of a Starbucks because it's like a it's like a giant robot in a hamster ball. It's like, it has everything it needs right there. It takes up, like, ten square feet. Whereas Yeah. It's, like, something by ten. And so what they're doing with idea with Cafe. I don't think Cafe X specifically is gonna succeed, but I'd be shocked if there's not a Cafe X type winner down the road because You can shove these things anywhere. You can shove it inside of an apartment building, and it can make sense in apartment building whereas, like, a full service Starbucks with staff wouldn't make sense in a in an apartment building. And so I think that those are gonna succeed.
52:05
And so I think there's a version of the gas stations that's like that. I think there's a version of the gas stations that basically
52:10
is just all automation.
52:12
The charging's automated,
52:13
and then you go and you push a button and it creates a giant slurpee for you, like, seven eleven but it's just a robot arm doing it. We'll see. We'll see if it works out, but I think it's gonna be more like buggies.
52:24
At least I hope it will be.
52:26
Alright. That's the episode. I gotta I gotta go get a haircut.
52:35
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
52:40
I put my all in it like days off on a road. Let's travel never looking back
00:00 52:47